Daine’s eyes shot open, her breath coming in sharp and ragged as she jolted upright, instinctively reaching for a sword that was nowhere in reach. Her fingers closed on empty air before her mind caught up to the situation—she was unarmed, on a makeshift cot, and, to her great irritation, completely and unapologetically naked.

  “Welcome back," came Donal's voice from her left. Daine turned, clutching the thin blanket instinctively to her chest. He sat perched on a stool beside her, a heavy, leather-bound tome in his lap, his feet propped on the edge of her cot.

  He raised an eyebrow. "I’d offer you a round of applause, but my hands are otherwise engaged," he said, tapping the cover of the book. "Figured I’d brush up on healing lore while you were napping. Turns out, ‘mortal wounds’ is a surprisingly elastic category for someone of your... stubborn disposition."

  "What in the name of the Goddess are you doing here?"

  "Now, now. I am going to be honest with you, my Lady Darkhelm, but that was not the wholehearted thanks for services rendered I had anticipated. I have had some time to consider how this moment was likely to play out, and, I must tell you, the lack of tearful sobs of appreciation cuts me to the quick."

  Daine shifted awkwardly, struggling to turn and face Donal without letting the thin blanket slip. The bed creaked ominously under her weight, and, combined with her size, it made any attempt at dignity seem an exercise in futility. She scowled, finally settling for an unceremonious kick in his direction. “What services, exactly?” she snapped, her voice a mix of irritation and embarrassment as her foot made contact with his leg, attempting to dislodge his perched feet from the bed.

  Donal merely chuckled, refusing to budge. "Oh, come now, Darkhelm. It hardly becomes a lady to act so ungrateful after receiving such attention. Here I’ve been, overseeing your convalescence like the most dutiful of squires." He glanced down at her feeble attempt to move him. "Might want to be careful there. If that bed snaps, I doubt your blanket is going to offer much protection.”

  With that, Donal rose and began a slow, deliberate pacing around the room, hands clasped behind his back in a way that struck Daine as uncharacteristically reflective. There was something unfamiliar in his gait—a touch of stiffness, perhaps a hint of injury he hadn’t mentioned?

  "You know," he said, voice light with exaggerated complaint, "carrying your not-insubstantial self over a league of hostile terrain wasn’t quite the heroic stroll one might imagine. Between the endless readiness for ambush, your sword clanging about, and the, shall we say, excessive leakage, well, my wardrobe took a regrettable hit. In fact, all our clothes were effectively beyond repair. You owe me a new coat, by the way."

  "Spare me the poetry," Daine said.

  A memory of those final moments before losing consciousness swam forward in Daine's mind. She had been in a battle, had she not? A monster—something from the shadow realm, she thought—had needed putting down. There had been fighting and then . . . an explosion. "I was hurt?"

  "You were dead," Donal replied."Well, as good as. I understand you are used to throwing yourself into confrontation without a moment's concern for your well-being, my dear, but I must ask you to be a little more circumspect. You are not as young as you once were, and even the Goddess's forbearance has limits. This was a close-run thing at the end."

  The unfairness of the charge stung even more colour to Daine's face. "You were the one that barrelled in against that thing without a moment's discussion! I only intervened to help after it defeated you!"

  "Well, recollections may vary, of course," Donal said airily, waving arms that, to Daine's perception, were more heavily muscled than they were before. "But my two central points still hold. Firstly, you cannot keep pushing your self-healing Skills to their maximum capacity and expect there to be no consequences. That your body is a patchwork quilt of scars should be telling you that. There will come a time - and not too far in the future, I would hazard - that you will have inflicted so much damage on your body that there will be nothing left for even your legendary endurance to overcome."

  More colour came to the Templar Ascendant's cheeks, and she clutched the blanket more tightly. "You saw me naked?"

  Donal waved the comment away. "Pretty hard not to when tending to your wounds. Please, believe me when I say it was nothing I had not seen before," he paused at that and cocked his head. "No, to be scrupulously honest, I actually am not sure I have seen someone of your age undressed before. However, the general . . . . biological similarities remain. Largely," he added as an afterthought.

  "And the second thing?" Daine said faintly, her mortification almost paralysing her.

  "My irritation at your lack of effusive thanks. Not only did I lug you all the way back here, supplementing your dwindling lifeforce for my own, but I then had to oversee further extraordinary interventions to keep you alive and - if that were not enough - offer to stay behind to ensure you did, eventually, wake up from your catastrophic wounds. And, of course, that is before we discuss my irritation at needing to change my Class again in order to provide you with adequate support for what is to come."

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  A flurry of questions tumbled from Daine’s mouth, her voice a mix of bewilderment and accusation. "Stay behind? You mean the others have continued without us? Without our protection and—” She gestured at Donal, words momentarily escaping her. “You let that happen? You know they won’t be safe!”

  Donal listened, arms crossed.

  Her mind finally caught up with his earlier, offhand remark, and a fresh question sparked. "And you—changed your Class? Again? To support me?” She shook her head, as if trying to shake sense into the situation. “What did you think you were gaining with that?"

  Donal shrugged, a hint of a smile creeping to his lips. "Well, I did try to keep up the Frontiersman bit, but it wasn’t, shall we say, adequate to the demands of the present company.” He scratched the back of his neck. "So I figured, why not do something… a touch more practical? You’re rather weighty cargo, as it turns out.”

  Before she could retort, he continued, “I needed More Resilience, less—” he paused, his eyes flickering with something she couldn’t quite place. “Let’s say, less of the ‘quiet-and-stealthy’ approach and more of the ‘things-stay-down-once-I-hit-them.’” Donal drew himself up to his full height. His new full height. Daine could now plainly see the difference in his physicality now.

  She had known several different iterations of Donal Assay in the short period of their acquaintance. When they had met, he had been Taelsin's spindly, absent-minded Secretary during the events surrounding the West's secession from the Throne.

  After their forced retreat behind the walls of Swinford, circumstances had required his transition into a Dark Warlord, much to Daine's chagrin. Time and distance, though, had allowed her to recognise that the choices the man had made during the siege of the City, whilst morally questionable, had mainly been necessary.

  Indeed, she doubted the refugee train would have been as long as it had without Donal's actions.

  And then, of course, there had been his recent transformation into a Frontiersman. Once again, the man—if he could still be called that, a title Daine was beginning to question—had moulded himself into precisely what the situation demanded, as if reshaping his very essence were as simple as donning a new cloak.

  It struck Daine, as her embarrassment at her current position began to fade, that - despite his irreverent attitude - if it had not been for Donal's open willingness to change the very nature of his being, it was unlikely any of their recent trials and tribulations would have been successfully negotiated.

  That realisation gave her pause.

  Daine had been a Knight of the Road for almost forty years. True, her Class had recently evolved, but Templar Ascendant was a logical—if significant—development to an established skillset, not a complete transformation in her essence. True, she was capable of much more now than she had been previously, but it was hardly like she had evolved from a melee fighter into a spell-flinger. Daine was not sure she would be able to shrug off such repeated seismic shifts in ability so easily as this man.

  Donal obviously was able to read her frowning expression: "It is not so strange as you might think, my Lady. For sure, the first couple of times that I evolved were pretty disorienting. From memory, the first one was that one moment I was some sort of minor Cleric, and the next, a hulking Barbarian. That was quite a head spin, I will have you know. However, over the years - and there have been far more of those than you will easily credit when gazing at my fresh face and careless demeanour - well, the novelty palls somewhat. Now, it is somewhat akin to finding a forgotten pair of gloves in a chest: a pleasing opportunity to wear something different, yet also pleasingly familiar."

  Daine was not so sure about that, but now did not seem like the time to press it. "What are you now?"

  "All in good time, my Lady. It may be best, though, for us to take events in order," Donal sat down on the edge of her bed, causing Daine to draw her legs up to her chin. "First things first, you should not worry about the refugees. Whilst we were away, Taelsin went through his own . . . Class Evolution, and - with the support of Souit and his men - has decided to seek to pass through the Bloodspires as soon as possible in order to strike for the safety of Velasir. He hopes Mayor Talsoon may provide succour."

  "But . . ."

  "I fully endorse that decision. Nothing matters to me more than the safety of that young man, so if I say this was the most sensible course of action, you will accept that."

  Daine did not think much of the high-handed tone there. "But what about the mountain men? We were only able to survive the last assault because you and I were there to defeat the attack. If they're stumbling around in the mountains without us to protect them, it could be carnage. And that is without whatever it was we stumbled on at their camp! If there are more of those shadow creates, the losses will be catastrophic . . . "

  "I do not want to hear more about it, my Lady Darkhelm. Taelsin determined this plan, and I support his thinking. In any event, they all left two days ago, so unless your stolid form has more sprinting capacity than I suspect to be the case, the point is fairly moot. Taelsin's gambit will succeed, or it will not. And there is precious little either of us can do about it in any event. Besides, I rather think that the men of the mountain and the Skuggaseier driving them will soon have far more to concern them than a fleeing little refugee train bristling with sharp spears and belligerent intent."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean us, my dear. I rather think their minds are going to be a little more focused on the two terrifyingly overpowered warriors hunting them down and massacring their warbands with extreme prejudice."

  Daine became aware that Donal's body suddenly shone with a disturbing red aura. "In my experience, the sort of unparalleled slaughter I have planned for the two of us to commit has always concentrated attention wonderfully."

  here.